


Darcy Against the Universe

by worddancer



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Cancer, Darcy Lewis-centric, Death, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Tony Stark Has A Heart, choosen family, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:31:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worddancer/pseuds/worddancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darcy Lewis didn't want to die but it seemed the Universe didn't care.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Darcy Against the Universe

**Author's Note:**

> First off, I'm not crying, you're crying. Second off, I've watched people die of cancer but I am not a doctor. I kept the medical stuff vauge for this reason. This is more about how I think the characters would respond than the actual medical process. 
> 
> Not connected to my babysitting the avengers series.
> 
> Triggers for cancer, death, dying, grief

Darcy Lewis didn’t want to die.

Darcy Lewis wasn’t supposed to die yet.

Life it seemed didn't give a damn what Darcy Lewis wanted.

Darcy Lewis had cancer and that wasn’t supposed to be how she died.

Darcy Lewis had survived Dark Elves, a Destroyer in New Mexico. Her best friend, her sister, was the world's top astrophysicists. Her brother was Thor. She was a Princess of Asgard, claimed by Odinson himself. Iron Man fixed her car, Captain America watched Disney movies with her, Bruce Banner taught her yoga, Hulk learned how to braid her hair and liked picnics, THE Pepper Potts took her shopping and had a standing lunch date, Black Widow taught her self defence and got her ready for dates. Hawkeye WAS her date. 

She wasn’t supposed to die like this.

It started out with headaches. Persistent, no amount of over the counter painkillers could destroy them. Then there was the bruises. And the exhaustion. Finally she went to the Tower’s doctors. 

Cancer.

Brain cancer.

Stage four.

Deadly.

Chemo to slow it down.

Didn’t matter.

In the end?

Death.

Darcy Lewis lived in New York, the Avengers Tower, and cancer was going to kill her. It didn’t matter every fight she and Clint had about keeping her safe. It didn’t matter all of the safety protocols JARVIS had stored for her. It didn’t matter all of the really cool bad ass self defense moves Nat had taught her. It didn’t matter that Tony had thought of building her and Jane a suit now that Pepper had Extremis. It didn’t matter that Hulk always found her after a battle or that Bruce taught her to meditate, it didn’t matter that Steve taught her to box while teaching her military strategy.

The team couldn't fight this.

Her body was at war with itself. Her body was killing her. 

Six months if they did nothing.

Maybe a year if she spent 90 percent of it sick from the chemo. She didn’t want to be sick her last days. She wanted to live.

She was selfish in her last days. She didn’t tell any of them. She bound her doctor though confidentiality laws. 

She proposed.

Marriage wasn’t everything, she knew that. She didn't even really want to be married. She just wanted Clint to know how much she loved him. She asked Jane to be her maid of honor, Natasha and Pepper to be bridesmaids. She asked Thor and Tony to walk her down the aisle.

She didn’t even bother to call her parents. 

She didn’t care that she was being selfish. This was for her. This was for all the chances she wasn’t going to go get to have.

She should have remembered she lived with a fucking super spy or three.

Natasha cornered her a month later. A month after she found out she was dying. 

“You have to tell them.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about Natasha. Clint already knows I secretly love purple.” Darcy stubbornly refused to acknowledge the older woman.

“Darcy, he deserves to know.”

“And I deserve not to die. I think I can at least choose how.”

“You can but why are you choosing the hardest way? You’re not saving any of us pain, you’re only adding more to yourself.”

“I know.” Darcy whispered as she allowed the redhead to hold her. “I just don’t want to die.”

“I know  дорогой, I know,” Natasha murmured as she stroked Darcy’s hair.

That night Darcy told Clint. They held each other and cried. The night after they told everyone else. There was more crying. Clint took himself off of active Avengers duty. Unless the world was ending he had no intention of leaving her alone. They stopped planning the big wedding. Darcy wanted to spend her last days doing what she loved with the people she loved. Not stressed out by seating arrangements. 

They did get married though. A quiet ceremony. Thor and Tony walked her down a small aisle set up on the balcony. Steve preformed the ceremony under a small arch way. Their friends stood in a half circle around them because Darcy said like fuck she was going to adhere to antiquated gender roles at her wedding.

They went on a week long honeymoon to Paris. They did every single stupid, touristy and romantic thing they could think of. They would have stayed longer but Darcy wanted to spend time with everyone. 

Thor took Jane, Darcy and Clint to Asgard. He demanded his father’s doctors examine Darcy. There was nothing they could do, the cancer was too advanced. Death had already rooted itself into her body. Even Asgardian medicine could not turn back death it seemed. Thor went to Odin and pleaded for anything that would work. 

Odin offered one of the Apples, one that would make her immortal. If and only if she stayed on Asgard. The cancer was rooted too deep. The apple would keep her healthy and alive and young but only on Asgard. She could never go home again.  

She couldn’t do it. She knew Jane would one day eat the apples. But Jane was healthy, she could travel between Midgard and Asgard to eat the apple, to slow her aging. One day Jane would live on Asgard but that was years, decades into the future. Her time on Earth wasn’t up yet. Darcy knew hers was but that didn’t mean she wanted to live for ever. Not without Clint. Not without her family. Not if forever meant being trapped to one place. 

Darcy Lewis didn’t want to die but she was going to choose how she lived. 

Jane closed down the lab for a week and the pair spent every day on the couch with trashy tv, magazines, wine, ice cream and talking. There was lots of crying, laughing and cuddling. They lay on the roof of the tower and Jane told her stories about the stars. The older woman wove the stories of the constellations into the science she studied. That’s why Darcy loved Jane. Jane didn’t just see the numbers, she saw the stories connected. “Magick is just science we don’t understand yet.” Jane who would forget to eat, sleep or even shower when Science! took hold of her knew Darcy better than any other person. In taking an internship the two women had found family. Darcy might not be a scientist and Jane might not care for politics but they both loved the stories of the stars.

She spent a week in Tony’s workshop watching him run around trying to invent new medical machines that would find a cure in time. She sat on the battered and beat up old couch in the corner and watched Tony try to find a way to save her. Tony, the man who fell apart when he felt like he couldn’t control something, was trying to find a way to control death. Darcy watched him for three days before she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the couch with her. He told her about growing up with Howard and never being good enough. She told him about growing up with Ronda and David and not even being worth the attention it took to be disappointed. Tony confessed he tried to see if he could have adopted her- even with her parents still alive. Darcy confessed she ran a DNA test because they were so alike she wanted to believe maybe he knocked up her mom years ago. They stole Jane, Bruce and the jet to fly to Alaska and see the Northern Lights.

After Tony, Darcy spent the week with Bruce. They still meditated every morning. Darcy dragged Bruce out to every tea shop in New York she could find. She made a color coded list so they could evaluate the tea they found. They cooked every Indian dish he knew how. Darcy signed him up for every dating site she could think of- including Tinder. 

“Someone has to get you out of the tower when I’m dead.” 

Bruce had Hulked out after she said that. She sat with the Hulk for several hours and let him practice braiding her hair. The Hulk wasn’t stupid, he just needed things explained simpler. Darcy told him that sometime soon she’d be going away. It turns out the Hulk can cry and Darcy can cry with him.

With Steve, Darcy decided she was going to visit every single art or history museum she wanted. They went to the few they hadn’t already been to in New York. They stole a quinjet and took off for London to see the Tower of London and the Royal British Museum. They went to the Vatican in Italy the next day. Darcy refused to fill out any of the SHIELD paperwork for the theft. She turned her puppy dog eyes on Steve until he did it while they watched Tangled, the Princess and the Frog and Beauty and the Beast later that night. After sleeping all day the next day the pair went to Disney on Ice. Steve took her to Coney Island for a day and out swing dancing. Darcy kissed his cheek and pinched his butt before going back into her and Clint’s apartment.

Thor told her stories of his world, his people. Darcy knew part of him was trying to change her mind but she loved his stories too much to tell him it wasn’t working. She braided his hair and let him braid hers. He used Mew-Mew to take her all over the world. Turns out travel by hammer is faster than travel by quinjet. They went to animal shelters to play with puppies and took as many pictures as possible. 

Darcy took pictures of all of them. She wanted them to be able to hold on to the good memories when she died. When her Nana died all she had wanted (besides more time) had been more pictures. 

Pepper took her to spa’s and lunches and ice cream nights. Pepper also confessed to running a DNA test on Darcy and Tony. The two were too much alike for it to be a cosmic coincidence. Darcy confessed again that she had done the same. Darcy told Pepper of how Tony had admitted to seeing if he could adopt the college grad- even though her parents were still alive. Pepper confessed to helping him see if they could work the legal loopholes to do it. They had still set up a trust fund for her. They were going to tell her on her next birthday. Darcy told Pepper that her goal had been to BE the older woman when she grew up. The pair cried. It seemed like Darcy spent every week crying for a few nights now. They wiped their tears and beginning planning the new charity Darcy would fund with her trust fund. She didn’t need it anymore after all. It made both of the women feel better to do something. Darcy might be dying but someone, somewhere would benefit.

Natasha was last in her little family. The Soviet spy didn’t show affection easily or quickly but Darcy had wormed her way in. Darcy watched and started to slowly take care of the woman. She cooked Russian food, she imported Russian vodka on Tony’s dime. She did the little things. She touched the former spy without thinking, casually, like she touched everyone else. She didn’t demand anything except Natasha’s presence at movie nights. The spy dragged Darcy out on the town. They found the most exclusive places and the greasiest holes in the wall. Natasha continued both her lessons in how to wield a mascara wand and how to throw a perfect right hook. The normality steadied Darcy. It had been almost two months trying to make as many memories as possible. Normal deserved being remembered too. Natasha had been the person who helped Darcy learn sign language when she first moved to the tower and wanted to be able to talk to Clint. Natasha had taught her how to drink the lighter fluid she called vodka. Natasha had also taught her the perfect hangover cure.

  
Darcy was still trying to figure out how Natasha had a hangover cure when she couldn’t get drunk thanks to the Red Room. 

Natasha didn’t cry with Darcy- it wasn’t how the redhead showed her emotions- but the spy got super cuddly during movie times and her hugs were now tighter and lasted longer. 

Every night she went home to Clint. They went to dinner. They watched movies and cuddled on the couch holding each other as close as possible. They had slow lazy sex, they had fast hard sex. They stopped crying after the second week. They seemed to decide to dump all of their emotions in their bedroom. They dumped their sadness into their bed, their passion, their anger, their fear and their love. Somehow they seemed to be able to say everything in their bedroom so they could act normal outside of it. 

Darcy didn’t know if she would have made it through the months without him. He was at every appointment. He helped her help Tony throw a Cancer Sucks Party. He held her when she needed to be held. He let her see when he was having trouble with it all. He told her she didn’t need to call her parents unless she wanted to, that she didn’t owe them anything. 

Dying sucked but Darcy wanted to live while she could. 

She felt healthy for the first four months after her diagnosis. She spent time with the people she cared about. She spent time by herself. 

After four months she started to lose weight drastically. The headaches were back and she started sleeping more and more. The doctors wanted to move her to the med floor but between Darcy’s refusal and Tony’s money they were able to get a full time nurse to stay with her and Clint. 

They finally found a use for the second and third bedroom. Darcy would start to use one as she got worse and the nurses could stay in the other.

Darcy and Clint interviewed fifteen nurses before they found two who would fit. Martha was sarcastic enough for Darcy to deal with and trained in basic combat which made Clint feel safer. She was an ex army nurse who had gone into long term care. Mary was a quiet and gentle woman who used to be a private nurse for some billionaire friend of Tony’s. No one wanted to admit that they were picking the nurses who would help her die. 

Darcy started to go downhill fast. 

A week after Martha and Mary started Darcy needed an IV drip for fluids and meds. She could still walk around but she didn’t much. 

Darcy didn’t want to die but she didn’t want to plan her funeral more. 

Darcy had been to all of three funerals in her life. Shockingly enough no one in her family talked to her parents so she never had to go to funerals with them. She went to one with an old college boyfriend when his uncle died, one with her roommate and one with Jane. Darcy felt uncomfortable at all of them. It wasn’t the people crying. It was each funeral she had gone to could have been interchangeable aside from a few small details.

They had therapists for dying. 

Pepper found a death and dying counselor and brought her to the tower. She let everyone know that woman was there if they needed her.

Dr. Jill Johnson recommended Darcy involve everyone in the plans for her death. Funerals, she said, weren’t for the dead- they were for those the dead left behind. Darcy hated that she was the dead they were talking about but she agreed with the therapist. Her family, her chosen family, deserved better than interchangeable words that meant nothing. She’d been the Avengers Liaison for two years. Taking care of her family was her job. She was going to do it until her dying day, literally now. 

Getting the others on board took a day to convince. Tony tried to deal with it how he dealt with everything. Big, splashy, memorable. If it was big people would remember it, remember her, and then she wouldn’t really die would she? Thor knew only his traditions and asked about hers. Steve remembered the priest being called when he got pneumonia one winter and stayed silent. Pepper wanted to control every detail. In the end it was Clint who thought of the roof, Jane who thought of the stars and Natasha who thought of family.

Darcy Lewis didn’t want to die but it seemed that she didn’t get a choice.

Five months into her six month window Darcy knew it was going to be soon. Her skin had taken on a sickly, yellow tinge. What muscles she’d manage to build with Natasha wasted away and hung limp off of her bones. Everything hurt, she could barely leave her bed. She now spent every night in the second room- half of them with Clint in the chair. Tony bought Clint a chair that reclined into a bed for those nights. Darcy spent more of her time asleep than awake. She was so tired now.

Darcy Lewis didn’t want to die but she wanted some rest so badly.

Clint was spending every minute in her sick room unless she kicked him out. On those occasions he went to the gym with Natasha and let her beat him bloody. The partners laid out their hurt in each other’s skin as they traded blow for blow on the sparring mats. There was always someone with Darcy. Pepper drew up a schedule making sure there was always someone to hold her hand, hold her water to her lips, read to her, watch her favorite movies, listen to her music, or just watch while she sleeps.

Darcy Lewis who had been alone so often in her life would not be alone in her death. 

On a Tuesday night, five months, ten days, seven hours and thirty-three minutes after a doctor told her she was dying Darcy Lewis died in her husband’s arms while her family gathered in her living room. 

She had slipped into a coma three days before. She had made Clint promise not to put her on life support. She died unhooked from machines, no IV, no heart monitor, no breathing tubes. Clint felt her last breath against his chest as he held his wife close for the last time. 

Darcy Lewis in death looked nothing like Darcy Lewis in life. 

Her hair was thin, brittle and limp, her face shallow and shrunken in on itself, her skin limp from her bones. She was a shriveled shell of who she had been, a false 2-D rendering of the tiny girl who marched in and set up house in the hearts of the world’s most damaged people.

Her chosen family, her true family, sat shiva the one thing Darcy requested to honor her Jewish heritage. Instead of a burial Darcy was cremated, her ashes brought to the roof during the night, Natasha turned on a playlist Darcy had titled “Scattering Me”, Jane told the stories of the stars and Clint threw her ashes from the top of the tower. They sat there and told stories of Darcy for the entire night. Each day for the next seven days they gathered in Clint’s apartment, members of Stark Industries, the X-men and even the Fantastic Four came to bring food and share their grief. 

Clint couldn’t bring himself to sleep in what had been their bed so every night he followed Natasha to her place, crawled next to her in her bed and let his best friend, partner, hold him as he cried. 

After the final day of mourning Pepper put on her perfect business suit and went to her office. Tony went to his workshop and pick things up at random before placing them back down. Bruce went to his lab, made a cup of tea and stared at the pot until it grew cold. Thor watched as Jane wandered lifelessly around her lab as she nibbled a stale poptart. Natasha and Steve beat the hell out of each other in the training room. Clint moved his things from his apartment into Natasha’s spare room. He wasn’t ready to stay in the room Darcy lived in and he sure as hell wasn’t going to sleep in the room she died in. 

Dr. Jill Johnson stayed on another six months slowly helping the team heal. Martha and Mary were both offered permanent positions in the Avengers med wing. They both accepted. 

Darcy Lewis hadn’t wanted to die and the universe didn’t care. 

**Author's Note:**

> In the world in my head Darcy is Jewish but she hasn't gone to temple since her Nana died. Shiva is the Jewish mourning ritual after a person dies. It literally means Seven as Shiva typically lasts seven days. It is preformed by the dead's close relatives ie- mother, father, sister, brother, spouse or children. Since the Avengers are Darcy's choosen family I can see her asking them to preform Shiva for her. Typically labor is forbidden during Shiva unless it's to maintain life so people close to the dead or the mourners will bring food for the mourners. 
> 
> I am not Jewish, my ex girlfriend is though. I didn't go into a lot of details about shiva in the story because I didn't want to make any big mistakes. IF you see a huge mistake PLEASE correct me so I can change it.


End file.
